CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
The Wrong of Law and Marx’s Second Secret (Symposium)
I feel honored to have been invited to comment on Valerie Kerruish’s The Wrong of Law, a book bringing a great range of methodological approaches to bear on a problematic of great interest to me. The book’s focal point is the self-seriousness of legal discourse. It is a constitutive feature of law that it ‘thinks itself as right,’ and this makes it unable to recognize the outside on which it depends (Kerruish 2025, 5). Although the specific injustices that result from colonial legal practices form a part of the analysis (building on her earlier Jurisprudence as Ideology [Kerruish 1991]), the overall focus on the constitutive wrong of law means that law’s empirical wrongs play an illustrative, thus secondary, role (primarily in chapter 5). As Kerruish frames it, the wrong of law is an internal quality prior to any external effects that this or that legal regime might have: ‘The idea of the wrong of law… is a metaphysical/logical idea’ (Kerruish 2025, 6)....
ARTICLES
‘A few not too troublesome restrictions’: Humanitarianism, Solidarity, Anti-militarism, Peace
What might Rosa Luxemburg’s thinking help us see about humanitarian efforts? What might it reveal for our understanding of the work of international law in both restraining and allowing organised violence, as well as responding to its humanitarian consequences? Within...
Emptying the bottom of the sea: Capital accumulation in the cavities of international law
Birutė Nomeda Stankūnienė, “Emptiness” (courtesy of the artist) Back in September, when the United Kingdom was getting used to a new Prime Minister, a seemingly minor piece of news went unnoticed by the public at large. ‘An obscure UN agency okayed the first...
Foreclosed Temporalities: Imperialism and International Criminal Law
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has been widely denounced for its prosecution of exclusively African defendants as an instrument of imperialism and neo-colonialism. The conception of imperialism even in the critical accounts, however, remains imprecise and...
Rosa Luxemburg and the Imperialism of Money
International monetary and currency relations are among the most glaring manifestations of imperial power in contemporary society. Money is necessarily a crucial attribute of state sovereignty and yet power over money is not equally shared. As one moves from...
Introduction: Rosa Luxemburg and International Law
By Christine Schwöbel-Patel and Serena Natile[1] 2021 marked the 150th anniversary of the birth of Rosa Luxemburg: a revolutionary theorist and political activist, whose work has provided important political economy critiques of imperialism, capitalism,...
Traditions of Critique: Gramsci, Buttigieg and James Joyce
Translator’s Introduction It is, I believe necessary to rescue Joyce from the industry he created. I don’t know of any other writer who who has given employment to so many scholars with the possible exception of Shakespeare, who has had a longer run at it. Joyce...
COP27: Planet Ransom
‘No State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of the protection of fossil fuel capital, or any claim for losses incurred due to decarbonisation; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.’ Prospects for this...
On the Vanishing of Ecologies: Latour and Global Destinies Imagined from Brazil
This article was written prior to the results of the elections in Brazil. Be not the one who debunks but the one who assembles, not the one who lifts the rugs from under the feet of the naive believers but the one who offers arenas in which to gather. Bruno Latour...
Brazil: Between Democracy and an Ongoing Coup
Last Sunday (October, 30) it became clear that a coup d'état is underway in Brazil. It is a coup of a new kind whose course is not substantially affected by the outcome of the elections. Only its pace may be. It is a coup that began to be set in motion in 2014 with...
Say it louder for the opportunists in the back: ‘Be the Voice of Iran’
As we watch the women and girls of our motherland lead what we can only hope will be a revolution in Iran, many of us abroad have been plagued by a sense of guilt and helplessness in light of our inability to fight with our fellow Iranians against a regime that has...
The Deviant Law Student
In a piece originally published in Socialist Lawyer, Kate Bradley reviews the Critical Legal Pocketbook, and finds it a useful corrective to capitalist legal education, perfect for socialists who study and work in law. Reposted from rs21 There are many...
Damage without Violence, Non-Violence without Peace: The Colston 4
Many of us have read about the Colston 4 Crown Court trial, and the merits of the defences raised in that case. This piece examines the recent appeal by the Attorney General (AG) of that case, and specifically how it fails to clarify a crucial...
Marching on Rome: The Return of the Undead
In a recent article in The Guardian, John Foot suggested that the extreme right was about to win the general election in Italy and, consequently, the next Prime Minister would be Giorgia Meloni, head of Frattelli D’Italia, a party which has roots in...
Politics in the Streets: Colombian People’s Resistance to the State of Exception
By: David Vásquez Hurtado, Carlos Mejía Suarez and Carlos Gardeazabal Bravo On April 28th, 2021, major protests began in Colombia. Demonstrators occupied public spaces deploying multiple strategies to that their voices reached all sectors of society....
Review: On Tyranny and the Global Legal Order
The language of ‘tyranny’ is undergoing somewhat of a renaissance lately. The election of Donald J. Trump as president of the United Sates awakened liberal fears of democratic decay and tyrannical rule, while many opponents of COVID-related restrictions argued...
Valerie Kerruish, 1943-2022
“Val has left us”, her partner Uwe Peterson wrote recently in an email to a few of us who had known her for a while. Valerie Kerruish was a Tutor, Lecturer and Senior Lecturer at the University of Western Australia from 1965-1992, and an Associate Professor at...
The Sirens of Ventotene
Once a site of internal exile, the island of Ventotene on Italy's West coast now hosts the Festival Gita Al Faro. Authors invited are asked to produce a short text for the festival. This essay was first presented by the author Chiara Tagliaferri as part of the 2022...
Justice will not be Televised
The defamation case filed by the world famous actor Johnny Depp against Amber Heard turned into one of the most watched live TV events of last month, with hundreds of millions single viewers and many commentators and dedicated Youtube streams all around the...
‘She reigns and he does not govern’: Law, anxiety and protest
Anxiety and hysteria is today a signature feature of public discourse in South Africa. On 6 October 2016, amid a second wave of countrywide student protests, Richard Pithouse, wrote that the ‘cycle of struggle in universities has marked a significant moment in the...
Jesus Fights Back: Easter Torture & Reverse Racism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pe3w5Gl7qMk Marcus De Matos[i] The short Easter video goes like this: Jesus, played by a black actor, is carrying his cross, surrounded by Roman soldiers. Suddenly, they started lashing him, as predicted in any representation of the...
The Colombian Presidential Election, a Decolonial Turn!
“Colombia has elected its first leftist President” or some variation of that headline is the international’s press overwhelming description of Colombia’s presidential election last Sunday. It is correct, as correct as saying a small lot of prisoners revolted in a...
